Cambridge’s Ironwood weighs move to Seaport
By Greg Turner
Wednesday, May 9, 2012
Seaport Square’s master builder plans to sell off a piece of the 20-block project to a biotech lab developer in a deal that could bring the next Vertex Pharmaceuticals to the South Boston waterfront.
Longfellow Real Estate Partners expects to finalize a land acquisition in September and construct a 900,000-square-foot “build-to-suit” lab and office complex on Seaport Boulevard.
“We’re in discussions with a number of tenants that are interested in the space,” said Adam Sichol, principal at Winchester-based Longfellow. “There are many tenants in the market right now that need significant amounts of space.”
Sichol declined to name potential tenants, but multiple real estate sources say Ironwood Pharmaceuticals is a top contender as the Cambridge firm hunts for 500,000 square feet of space.
If Ironwood pulled up stakes in Kendall Square for Seaport Square, the shift would mirror Vertex’s milestone move across the river from Cambridge to new headquarters now under construction at Joe Fallon’s Fan Pier.
“Cambridge is a very hot lab market, but Vertex proved there’s another place to be,” said John Fowler, executive managing director at HFF, a commercial mortgage brokerage that secured financing for the Vertex project. “If Ironwood comes, that would just help establish the area as one of the up-and-coming life sciences locations.”
Michael Higgins, Ironwood’s chief operating officer, declined to comment on the Seaport speculation but said the 300-person company is in the “early days” of evaluating available expansion spaces in Cambridge, Boston and Waltham.
Ironwood has been in hiring mode and may be just months away from winning Food and Drug Administration approval for its first drug, a treatment for irritable bowel syndrome and chronic constipation that analysts say could become a $1 billion-a-year blockbuster.
Vertex’s 1.1 million-square-foot, two-building Fan Pier lease was contingent on the company winning FDA approval for its strong-selling hepatitis C drug Incivek. Since then, Vertex has also won approval for a cystic fibrosis drug, Kalydeco, and its shares soared this week on positive results from a broader two-drug CF treatment.
Longfellow’s two-building complex, known as blocks L1 and L2 on the Seaport Square plan, would rise at one end of an 8-acre parking lot.
“We think the Seaport is a really exciting market to be in,” Sichol said. “It’s really the only market that’s ripe for big construction projects.”
The team at Longfellow, formed three years ago, includes former principals of Lyme Properties, which developed Genzyme’s Kendall Square headquarters as well as an eight-story building for Vertex now owned by BioMed Realty Trust.
Seaport’s developers — Boston Global Investors, led by John Hynes, and equity partner Morgan Stanley — sold two parcels late last year to make way for a hotel project next to the Barking Crab restaurant and a 14-story apartment complex on Boston Wharf Road. Hynes could not be reached for comment.
Last week, the $3 billion Seaport Square finally celebrated its first groundbreaking, for the Boston Innovation Center, on a lot across from the Longfellow project.
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